Which is maybe enough to cause some derision. After all, the past is the past, right? And we live in a remake/re-release happy world at the moment -- why not just make a new Splinter Cell?

Well, according to Matt West of Ubisoft Toronto, the modern gamer's refined pallet has all but physically forced the studio's hand, stating that "it kind of has to be a remake as opposed to a remaster" in order to sate the evolved expectation of today's players. According to West, this remake is lead by the original game's mantra of "stealth action redefined".


Besides, this still might just be one Splinter Cell project of more to come, or already in development. Who knows?

Ubisoft does, of course, and today's news comes via Ubisoft's official news page. The post also features comments from Matt West mentioned above, who is serving as the game's producer, alongside creative director Chris Auty and technical producer Peter Handrinos, with one of the key takeaways from the announcement being that the game will be powered by the powerful Snowdrop game-engine.

"From a tech perspective, if I had to boil it down to a couple of words in terms of the difference, what we're doing is exploration and innovation here," says Handrinos. "We've got a new engine and a new console lifecycle to take advantage of, so the tech is one area that we don't want stuck in the past."

Snowdrop powered the Tom Clancy's The Division titles and is being leveraged to build the hugely detailed open worlds of both the new Avatar and Star Wars games Ubisoft landed the respective licenses of, and continues to be a standard bearer for lighting, destruction and detail.

"Snowdrop is a proven modern AAA engine," Handrinos add. "It empowers content creators and programmers alike to try things quickly, see what works, and ultimately find success. I think that's one of its major advantages, allowing us to quickly find the modern equivalent of that core Splinter gameplay. Some other AAA engines out there do not afford this type of iteration [of] speed, necessarily, and so this is really what gives Snowdrop an edge when bringing Splinter Cell up to speed on a modern engine."

The full Q&A linked above also goes into detail about what makes a great Splinter Cell game as well as by being clear that even the team itself is still in the early throes of being built, but that what they've managed to test and build so far is incredibly promising.

"With this remake, we are building a solid base for the future of Splinter Cell," concluded Chris Auty.

Great games back in the day. I recently went back to the HD versions released on PS3 and they are well in need of a gameplay update. Keen to see how this shapes up.

Yes, I agree. Hope they do it justice.